In the last issue of Oracle Magazine (March/April 2010), I continued to describe what I consider to be the killer feature of Oracle Database 11g Release 2 : Edition-Based Redefinition. If you recall from the last issue, Edition-Based Redefinition gives you the ability to perform an online application upgrade of your application.

This is the third and final installment of a series of columns examining this new feature. If you have not read the prior two installments, I encourage you to do so before reading this column, because this column builds on the example we’ve been working with.

Last time, our application upgrade was not just a simple patch of our application. It not only replaced some PL/SQL units (patching) but also updated the physical structure of a table involved in our application. It was a true application upgrade that included changes to objects whose type is editionable (our PL/SQL units in the example) and also to some objects whose type is not editionable (our table structures). The following object types are editionable: